


Anamnesis

by hollowbirds (torturousthings)



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, Ryden, Rydon, That is all, inspired by an encounter i had earlier today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 23:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torturousthings/pseuds/hollowbirds
Summary: A single message triggers a memory that's stayed tucked away for years. And that's okay.





	Anamnesis

My phone pings and I look down at it automatically, telling myself for the umpteenth time that I really need to turn the notifications for this group chat off, but I never do. Crazy how lazy I can be, even when it’s something that irritates me endlessly. 

 

**_Jon to your group                                                  now_ **

_ you ever see a stranger so beautiful it makes your heart ache a little  _

 

I slide the notification to the right to answer it. No, I haven’t. I barely ever look at strangers on the streets, unless there’s a dog with them. I’ve never lingered on an unknown face long enough for it to matter to me. 

 

But that’s a lie, I realise, so I let the notification spring back into place on my screen, not unlocking my phone. Another one comes to take its place, pushing the first one down a notch. 

 

**_Spencer to your group                                          now_ **

_ i once saw a poster of celine dion on the street and couldn’t sleep for a week  _

 

I was nineteen, I think. In New York for some reason that I can’t remember but probably didn’t matter because it didn't change my life. The tall buildings felt like stone giants just waiting to be woken up; it was only a matter of time until they crushed all the yellow taxis and ugly buses, the spindly stop lights and the people hurrying about in their suits and polished shoes. Just a matter of time. 

 

I saw him in the subway as I sat, my side against the metal bars that look the same everywhere in the world. He walked in at 23rd Street Station, and I’m surprised I don't remember what I was doing in New York at all but know exactly where he got on. I must’ve glanced at the display, or associated him with the automated voice that announced the station. I don’t know. He was wearing a white shirt beneath a blazer that looked like corduroy, or velvet, or any of those bullshit fabrics I’ve never really had the attention span for, but I couldn’t stop looking. Dark brown hair falling over a pair of eyes whose colour I never did find out, although I’m sure I could pick out the perfect shade of brown if I had to. He had thin eyebrows and a boyish face, although his demeanour suggested he was my age, if not older. Almost-sideburns that would’ve looked horrible on anyone else, but not him. On him it gave a certain 1968 McCartney vibe, something not exactly contemporary but not quite out of place either. Can the Beatles ever be qualified as has-been? 

 

He never smiled — why would he? Smiling at a stranger in New York probably ended up with a murder in some back alley, and he seemed like he knew that — but I could imagine him, imagine the corners of his mouth turning upwards as his eyes become all squinty, laughing at some stupid joke I’d tell. I wondered if he laughed at stupid jokes. If we would get along, in some other universe where we’d actually meet, not as two strangers on a New York City line A subway but as people who’d gotten introduced for one reason or another. I wondered if he’d smile at me then. I’d smile back for sure.

 

He wasn’t in a hurry, unlike all those other people squeezing themselves through the doors each time they’d open. Maybe he was coming back from a date, maybe he was going to see his mother. He leaned against the inner wall of the carriage, casually, stretching his long legs out in front of him, hands in his pockets. I’m not sure what he was staring at, or if he was just zoning out because he can’t fall asleep at night and resolves to simply tune out at times where his attention isn’t needed. The white shirt had its top button undone, surely more for comfort than for fashion, although he cared about his appearance; it showed. 

 

I don’t remember which stop he got off at, only that it was before mine. The doors opened and the next second he was gone. Swept in and out of my life in a matter of minutes, and that’s when the heartache started. The sudden awareness of the fact that I’d never get to know him, never see him smile or hear the tone of his voice. He was just an empty space in the subway across from me now, just a face whose traits still lingered in my mind until I got off the carriage, and long after that. For a long time I convinced myself he wasn’t real. No one had acknowledged him, right? He didn’t sit down or ask someone to move in order to get out of the train, his swift, fluid strides carrying him out of the train so fast that I didn’t even have time to talk to him. Maybe his feet weren’t even touching the ground. He could’ve been nothing more than a ghost, and I was a fool to have sat there, unmoving. I regretted that, not having stood up and, I don’t know, said hello. Hi, I’m Brendon. I think I’m lost. 

 

Maybe he would’ve smiled then, or maybe he would’ve taken me for an idiot and told me to look at a damn map and stop bothering him. He seemed like he’d do the former. I hoped he’d do the former. He didn’t look at me once, but it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had. He was the ghost, the apparition, and I was the guy lucky enough to witness it, like an eclipse or an aurora borealis. 

 

Now, years later and across the country, I can only hope that stranger is happy, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, whoever he loves. Maybe, in another life, that person is me. 

 

I look at Jon’s message again. Consider for a second if I should answer, but it feels as though sharing that memory would be erasing it, tainting it. So I stay silent. Keep him and my wishes to myself, because somewhere, somehow, I’ve known him. There is no doubt in that. 

**Author's Note:**

> do feel free to let me know if you have ever had an encounter like that, someone mesmerising just fleetingly passing through your life, 'cause i did. today, no less. 
> 
> i like to think that that's one or more alternate universes in which brendon never got the chance to know ryan at all. he'd regret it, every time. 
> 
> and, for the record, 
> 
>  
> 
> _anamnesis_  
>  ˌanəmˈniːsɪs  
> noun  
> recollection, especially of a supposed previous existence.


End file.
